Ten Simple But Effective Household Cleaning Tips

Cleaning Home

Everyone has his or her own way of tidying up the messes in their home. They may be bordering on the obsessive, or they may be bordering on the chaotic. But whatever cleaning style you have, it doesn’t help to boost it with these ten simple but effective household cleaning tips:

An ounce of prevention

Why create a huge mess if you can prevent it from forming in the first place?

Instead of leaving a glass of water on the desk when you’re done using it, you could simply run it through some water, wipe it clean and place it back on the shelf. Or you could wipe your feet before entering the house instead of rushing in with your muddy shoes. Or you could toss a candy wrapper straight into the trash bin instead of tossing it behind the couch.

This is perhaps one of the most useful and least troublesome household cleaning tips. By avoiding the habit of carelessly placing junk and dirt everywhere, you can help keep things neat and organized. You will find that your home will be a much more livable and loveable habitat to stay in.

Smaller messes, lesser cleaning

Speaking of prevention, cleaning smaller messes when they occur prevents you from having to deal with the aftereffects of settled stains and piled dishes.

It’s just like good business. Handle problems when they are small and manageable, and you will not have to invest huge amounts of resources in the cleanup when they balloon out of control. Take the initiative to clean the small messes, and you will save yourself a lot of headaches in the long run.

Pet management

Fur and fecal matter are just the tips of the iceberg when it comes to pet management.

Pets are serious headaches, and that is why there are professionals who are trained to train your pets. Invest a little time and money in hiring a pet trainer to teach your dog or cat to live with you, and you will not have to worry too much about hidden ‘landmines’ and torn furniture.

Zoning

Splitting cleaning duties to zones is common sense for those who are familiar with the concept, but is still a valid one to discuss for household cleaning tips.

Some people keep on wondering why the dust and junk never seems to end, even after hours of cleaning. Start you cleaning process from the least accessible areas of the house going outward from the area. This allows you to keep track of the areas you have already gone through, and will tell you where you need to focus your cleaning next.

Set aside a schedule

Cleaning little problems can be spontaneous, but you really have to set aside a schedule if you want to tackle bigger household chores.

By making a schedule, you settle yourself into a pattern of cleaning your home. This pattern will help encourage you to get things done, and will also help bolster your resolve when you are feeling too lazy to get up and get things cleaned. Set one day of a week, like Sunday, to handle house-wide cleaning chores, and things will be a lot easier for you to handle.

The power of vinegar, lemon and baking soda

This is one of the more money-saving household cleaning tips, as cheap but effective household materials can be used to replace commercial-grade cleaning materials.

Vinegar, lemon and baking soda are the basics of the housecleaning process. They remove stains, neutralize bad odors and sanitize surfaces they come into contact with. They can even be used to handle any buildup of molds in your home. Be willing to spend a little time studying how to use them, and you could be saving big bucks on cleaning materials and supplies.

Working together

Two heads are more than one, two sets of hands are more than one, and two sets of legs are more than one. Oh, and they’re all better than one too.

Splitting the work down the middle and having more hands to work with eases the cleaning burden around the house. Leave the dishes and table management to one person, vacuuming and dusting to another, yard management to another, and the laundry to yet another person. You get things done a lot faster while no one gets to complain that someone’s being lazy and goofing off.

Organization

Knowing where everything is helps make the job a whole lot easier than randomly piling stuff together.

While a person may claim that they have a system of ‘organized chaos,’ not everyone can navigate through a labyrinth of stinky socks and towering stacks of CDs and DVDs. Drawers, shelves and simple common sense exist for a reason, and they can help make life a whole lot easier to live with. Plus, you won’t have to panic when something is missing as you know exactly where they are at all times.

Handy waste bins and baskets

Many people are seriously lazy bums that do not want to walk down a flight of steps just to dispose of a piece of trash.

Providing a convenient method of disposing trash while making it highly visible encourages people to dispose of their garbage properly instead of mindlessly tossing it around. Even a simple plastic or paper bag can serve as a handy dandy trash bin in a pinch.

A culture of cleanliness

This is perhaps the single most useful tips of them all.

You do not need to brainwash yourself and your family in order to develop a culture of cleanliness. It is simply teaching you all about how to enjoy looking at something that is clean and well managed. After all, no one will bother to clean if he or she gets nothing out of it, right?

And there you have it, ten simple but effective household cleaning tips